


the glow of the festival lights

by lunariaans



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: F/M, Festivals, Fluff, Romance, oh yeah its hella gross fluff, tsubakis a gross nerd whos so in love with hana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 19:46:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7727491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunariaans/pseuds/lunariaans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The light bounces off her face, off her clothes, off her hair, casting her in an unearthly golden glow and he finds himself a little too smitten by the sight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the glow of the festival lights

**Author's Note:**

> GROSS I'M SO SAPPY AND GROSS. I need to stop writing things at one in the morning when I'm half asleep because when I wake up and reread I'm just??? WTF is this???? Disgusting???? Also I saw some of you talking about my fics on tumblr and omg???? You're all so nice???? So this fic is based off a drawing by ricetiki who does the best hanbaki art, welcome to the hanbaki hell family.  
> I just had to get this story out of my system before I die even though I'm working on 4(5?) stories currently and I'm dying anyways.  
> Check end notes for headcanons and such.

Though the sun had long since set and the stars had started to peek through their dark blanket, it was still incredibly hot.

He doesn't mind, he has no reason to. Everything in life at the moment just happened to be _perfect_.

He could stand a little heat.

He walks beside her a safe distance away; not too far to where she'll get the wrong idea, not too close to warrant suspicion. He's not really sure she's paying attention though as she's too busy being enamored by the sights of the festival around her.

He is also a little too enamored with one particular sight.

She's wearing a yukata, the only traditional dress she deems okay with to wear, and her hair is pulled back from her face, allowing her smooth features to expose themselves to the waning world around them. The soft yellow glow from the paper lanterns are the only source of light they have, yet he doesn't really mind.

The light bounces off her face, off her clothes, off her hair, casting her in an unearthly golden glow and he finds himself a little too smitten by the sight.

She has the biggest smile on her face, the brightest shine in her eyes, and when she turns to look at him, he realizes that the heat he feels may not be from this midsummer's night.

She raises an eyebrow as she catches him staring, and the heat of the air rises.

"Something on my face?" she asks, but the only thing he can see is that blinding smile. "What're you looking at?"

He shakes his head as his own small smile appears on his face.

"Nothing in particular," he says, waving his hand in the air. She snorts.

He's not sure how, but her smile breaks even bigger as she looks down at the paved street below their feet. She holds candy in one hand, a ribbon in the other, and the sounds of vendors shouting out their wares fills the comfortable silence between them. Though it doesn't last for long.

All too quickly she's behind him, small hands on his back, and she's pushing him towards the edge of the festival. She's stronger than she looks, firmer than she seems, and he can't help but laugh a little at her eagerness.

"Where are we going?" he asks, trying to turn his head to look at her.

"You'll see," she says and no sooner than when the last word comes out they are in the quietest part of the capital's square. Only a few vendors surround the quiet ends of the main streets.

She stops pushing and starts pulling as she releases his back and catches his hand. Her palm is warm against his own and she holds onto it tight; his heart nearly skips a beat.

She pulls him up to the last vendor on the street where an old man sits behind the counter. She smiles as he looks up at the two approaching.

He can't really remember what the girl next to him says, it's all a blur as it _must_ be the heat of the night messing with his mind, but the next thing he knows is that even he has more candy in his hands, bags full of it. _Karumeyaki_ ; how typical of her to like something so sweet.

The grilled caramel is almost too much for him to stomach, but he eats it anyways, something else is making him.

He looks over at her once again, she now stands on a short and narrow stone wall, and she walks across it; heel to toe, heel to toe, her arms spread wide as if she were a bird about to take flight. He grins as he watches, as she chatters endlessly about the most mundane of things.

She tips a little too far to the side as she nearly loses her balance, but he quickly reaches for her arm, steadying her. He's expecting that rueful glare, but instead he's greeted with a dopey look. It _had_ to be the heat. 

She hops off the wall and he releases her. She decides to sit on the wall's edge instead, eating more of that awfully sweet candy; too sweet, too sweet.

"You'll get a toothache if you eat too much," he tells her, to which she replies by sticking out her tongue.

"I don't care," she shrugs, "this is my favorite."

"You could've gotten karumeyaki anywhere, why'd you have to drag us all the way out here?"

She frowns and rolls her eyes, seemingly becoming the Hana he knows once again. "Because the ahjussi down here always makes the best."

"The best you say?" He raises a brow. "How do you know if you don't eat it from anywhere else?"

She sticks the candy in her mouth once again, ignoring his question but narrowing her eyes.

"That's pure sugar you know."

"Will I _die_ if I eat too much of it too?" she asks in that sarcastic tone and he crosses his arms, trying to hide the grin he feels while trying to the fight the heat that builds.

"You just might if you're not careful," he says, looking back down the street towards where most everyone else was. The shouting, the music, but mainly the laughter is what he hears as he tries to gaze through the glow of the lanterns. He tries to find something, someone, to distract him, but it's harder than he realizes trying to keep his eyes off of _her_.

"This has always been my favorite festival," she says with a wistful sigh, placing her bag of candy next to her on the wall. "My father always used to take me and my mother. We'd walk around the other parts, but he'd always end up leading us down here to the ahjussi."

He keeps his eyes trained on the faraway lights; he finds it endearing in a way, how she uses the words from an old territory to the north of Hoshido.

"Ahjussi," he says, drawing out the word slowly. "What does it mean?"

"Ahjussi," she says back, faster and more pronounced than him. "You know...an ahjussi."

He side eyes her from his spot, amused by the way she doesn't explain it.

"Okay, but tell me what it means."

He sees her frown, her eyebrows furrow, and it's all the more endearing when he knows it's a look she saves just for him.

"Like...an old man," she tries to explain. "That's really all it is. It's just something you call them."

"Oh," he says, looking back over at her. "So like an ojisan."

"Sorta, I guess," she places her head in her hand. "I don't know. Why do you care?"

"Just asking. You're using words I don't know."

"Oh?" She perks up a little. "So Mister Perfect is not so perfect in every language."

He rolls his eyes. "I'm perfect in every language I actually _know_."

"Ah ah!" She exclaims, standing back up in a fluid movement. "I know more than you do!"

"Just one word."

"I know plenty more."

"Yes, probably only curse words."

"Oh, I know _all_ the dirty words."

He watches her take a step back up onto the short wall, placing her hands on her hips and turning her nose up high. For once, she was finally as tall as him.

"Do you know any Nohrian languages?" he asks, and he revels in the way her face falls flat.

"Why would I need to know those?"

"The times have changed, Kazahana," he says, taking an even step towards her wall. "Learning a new language might make you just a bit more cultured. Maybe even a little refined."

She tries pushing his shoulders but instead she has to grab onto them so she doesn't fall off her wall. He can feel the heat coming back.

She's very close, incredibly so, and he takes the second to enjoy every tiny detail of her face, every divot and curve and line of her small yet elegant face; there was nothing about her that really needed refining.

"Do _you_ know any Nohrian languages?" she asks, and this time her voice is just above a whisper, a subtle call for something else.

"Oui," he says, and he feels her fingers tighten against his shoulders, the fabric of his yukata wrinkling beneath her palms.

"That's lame," she says, trying to stand on her tiptoes while still leaning forward. "You only know one word too."

"I know many more I assure you," he retorts, and her eyes have seemed to grow brighter while the world around them grows darker. How could that be?

She seems to take a glance down at his lips and his fingers and toes feel as if they are on fire, burning his bones and the muscles beneath his skin. The area under her hands is filled with a startling heat as she inches closer to his face ever so slightly.

The few lanterns above fill the air with that glow, and the light forms a halo around her softly colored head. It's dim, but he knows it's there and that's all he needs.

His hands somehow make their way towards her waist, resting on the fabric that holds the yukata together, and his heart seems to pound faster, louder; surely she must be able to hear it.

"I may not know any Nohrian languages," she says, and he can smell the sweet candy on her breath. "But I know all the words I need to say to you."

He feels his pounding heart skip a beat; he feels that burning fire scorch even brighter. The heat makes its way to his cheeks.

 _She didn't really just say that, did she?_ he thinks, but he knows there is no doubt that those words came from her mouth. They're almost tooth rottingly sweet, far too sweet for even her, but the words come out nonetheless and fall on their almost empty street of the festival. 

He can barely make out the blush in the dim light but it's there across her cheeks, sprinkled like a light layer of dust. She blinks a few times, trying to decide if she really said that out loud, and he finally cracks a smile at her sudden worried state.

"And what words would those be?" he teases.

"Whatever you would like to hear," she replies.

His breath hitches; it gets stuck in his throat as he aches to have her tell him what he desires to hear come from her. To hear how she feels, what she wants, he wishes to hear all those things fall from those pale lips of hers.

As a child he was always told to never play with fire, it was dangerous, but right now in this moment he couldn't help but want to place his entire being within the flames. To let it consume him, to let it own him and his weak heart; he would give anything to hear just a few simple words tumble out her mouth.

"Tell me you love me," he says in an almost whisper, and he thinks it's a mistake when he sees her eyes widen a bit in surprise. Surely she had only been teasing.

But the surprise fades and the small grin makes a home on her face as she removes one hand from his shoulder to brush his bangs to the side.

She waits a moment, leaving him in agony as his mind begs her to confess, to admit that she loves him too. Maybe that was too selfish of him to ask, it was out of the blue.

She bites her bottom lip in that familiar way he's grown so used to; she must be reveling in the way he waits for an answer.

"I love you," she says, plain and simple, but the words mean the world to him.

She looks like she can't contain her smile anymore, as she grows flustered and buries her face in her hands. She lets herself fall forward off the wall, but she doesn't seem to worry as she knows he'll catch her; he always would.

He wraps his arms around her tightly, dragging her feet off the wall and firmly into the ground though she still has her face in her hands and her body leans forwards into his.

He is most definitely sure that she can feel the beating of his heart now, the way it pounds and pushes against his chest, begging to be released from its cage. It aches, but not in the way he was expecting; it doesn't ache because of his expected rejection, it aches to hear those words again.

She starts giggling against him, a sweet sound he doesn't get to hear often, and pretty soon he joins in on the merriment.

She pulls away from his chest but his arms stay around, and he thinks that this is where he's always belonged.

She covers her mouth with one small hand and laughs even more, though it's a different laugh than the cruel one he had heard from when they first met. This one is gentle yet fierce, like tiny tinkering bells, or maybe it was wind chimes in a cool breeze. It's so refreshing to hear such a simple sounding joy come from her, and he wonders how there could've ever been anything bad in the world when a laugh like hers exists. 

She still laughs into her hand and her eyes look everywhere but his own.

In an impulsive act, he lifts one hand up to her wrist, gently grasping it and pulling the hand from her mouth away to reveal that smile he so dearly loves.

He leans in real close, until his nose is tickled by the stray hairs around her face that could not be tamed with the rest. He places his mouth near her ear, squeezing her wrist a little tighter.

"Do you really?" he asks, and her giggling quickly stops.

She pushes her head away from his and looks up at him, a more sober look on her face.

"Of course I do," she says quietly, reaching up to tug on a piece of his hair. "I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it."

He looks down at her and the heat is blazing and his heart is pounding and it seems as if the world has stopped spinning as the lanterns glow and the smile on her face returns along with a blush. Of course she meant it; a samurai like her would never lie to a man like him.

He smiles, wraps his arms tightly around her once again and buries his face into her neck. He lets out a short laugh.

He feels as if he could die at any given moment and it would be okay.

His laughter subsides but the laughter from others at the festival takes his stead, filling the night air with more of the joyous stuff. How could everything in this moment be so _perfect_?

She pushes herself from his tight grasp and instead grips his upper arms, standing on tiptoes to try and be level with him.

"You're so easy to please," she says suddenly, looking at him with those round eyes. They're nothing like he's ever seen, a beauty he's never dreamed; not even the most articulate poet in the world could describe something so special as the look she places upon him now.

"Is that so?"

"Mhmm," she hums almost lazily, dropping her eyes once again to look at his lips, as if to leave a signal.

He raises a brow but quickly grabs the sides of her face with his heated hands, the contact of his palms with her already warm cheeks fully setting his hands ablaze.

She looks up expectantly but she is greeted with a barrage of small and quick kisses along her jaw and across her cheek. She starts to giggle again, the sweet sound of a happy moment that sounded too sweet, even for her.

The more he gives, the more she giggles, until she is practically wriggling beneath his grasp, trying to escape the onslaught of his affections.

Finally, he stops, and once more he takes in the appearance of her face and the way the light bounces off it. Though the area is dim she's just so damn _bright_.

She opens her mouth to speak, to keep the silence from falling, but she's beat to the punch as a voice shouts out to them.

"Hey!" he hears, and he quickly turns his head back to the festival to see two familiar faces standing at the edge. It's Lord Takumi's retainers.

Dressed in their best (by which he has to guess was Oboro's doing) they approach closer, tearing the moment away as he has to drop his hands.

"We've been looking everywhere for you two," Hinata says, clasping a hand on the taller man's shoulder.  He narrows his eyes down at the samurai.

"The royal family is leaving," Oboro says, relaying their information. "We're to head back to the castle at once."

Hana nods, taking a step further away from him. "Understood. We'll follow you guys."

They both nod and turn to leave, disappearing as quickly as they had come.

She sighs, walking back over to the forgotten bag of candy on the wall, and she slowly picks it back up. She casts him a long look.

He wants to say something, anything really, to redeem this moment, but it seems that he could not really find anything left to say.

She sighs again, though this time with a smile, and walks back towards the festival. He quickly follows, a safe distance away, though this time it's just a bit closer.

The lights become brighter once more and she's cast in that unearthly golden glow again. The noise of the festival becomes louder, but he's able to pick out a few words that she seems to be saying to no one in particular.

"I love you," he thinks he hears, but when he looks over she is staring straight ahead, at the royal family coming into view.

He had thought there was nothing left to say, but he quickly realizes how wrong he was. He leans down next to her, to whisper in her ear, and he sees her shudder as his breath hits her skin.

He takes a deep breath and smiles as he also realizes that the heat is not as unbearable as before, but that fire is still there dancing just below the tips of his fingers and his toes.

He would let a fire consume him, but there was no way he would ever get burned.

He tugs at the sleeve of her yukata.

"I love you too."

**Author's Note:**

> So I know Hoshido is based off Japanese culture but I added in some Korean (literally just one word but) because I'm WAY more familiar with Korean culture than Japanese and at one point in history Japan invaded Korea so it wouldn't be so far fetched if back in the day Hoshido conquered some other lands that make up the big Hoshido motherland we all know and love today. I headcanon that Hana's mom would be the one from the northern territory (the Korean) and is thus the one that taught Hana Korean words. Tsubaki know Nohrian languages because wtf wouldnt he that little asshole probably learned them just to add to his perfect ass list of things he does perfectly. Languages I headcanon as Nohrian: Mainly French, but maybe some German and Latin because they were based off a whole mess of cultures. THERE WILL BE A SORTA SEQUEL TO THIS BUT WITH MATOI OKAY  
> 아저씨(ahjussi) as mentioned in the story is what you'd call a middle aged man in Korean.  
> THE ART I WAS TALKING ABOUT:  
> http://ricetiki.tumblr.com/post/148584093182/he-saw-her-in-the-soft-glow-of-the-festival


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